Hands-On with KO Kings 2002

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We go a few rounds with an early version of EA's impressive Xboxing title.

By IGN Staff

If you can stand a fighting game that doesn't have any fireballs or 360 Piledrivers then the boxing engine in EA's Knockout Kings 2002 might give you that special feeling you've been looking for. The fighting should take center stage in a boxing title, but intricate animation and awesome sense of abuse in KK02's fighting engine left us floored but coherent enough to bring you our early impressions.

The roster of fighters doesn't have the same number of real life boxers found in Knockout Kings 2001 for the PS2, but there is the significant addition of Felix Trenidad to the mix. To round out the lists of heavyweights, middleweights and lightweights, developer Black Ops has resorted to using fictional fighters that you can also face in career mode.

You can't stop the jab, ever.

None of the real fighters has their signature style, even though they will have attributes and ratings that reflect their careers. Muhammad Ali is lightning fast with tremendous heart but whether he's being controlled by a human or the CPU, you won't really see him floating and stinging like you remember from back in the day. His style will look more or less like every other fighter's style except he'll have his natural speed, power and endurance advantages against everybody else. No matter what boxer you choose to fight with or against, it all comes down to your skill and reflexes as a gamer.

The left analog stick moves your boxer around the ring and move his upper body when you're in range of the other boxer. The fighters are always locked on and facing each other so you're only moving your fighter in closer, away from or the left or right of the other guy by pressing up, down, left or right, respectively, on the stick. It's when you're in range of the fighter that moving becomes tricky because a slight press in a direction (ie. don't mash the stick until it hits the side) leans him to the left, right, back (push down on the stick) or makes him duck (up on the stick).

Send them reeling with an uppercut

In the middle of any fight, it is extremely hard to be so precise with your stick movements because nine times out of a ten you're in a panic trying to get away from an ass whooping. You don't really care if your guy leans back or backs completely away, as long as you stop the onslaught. Moving around takes longer than moving so that you'll have to lean the stick all the way in one direction and keep it there until you start to see your boxer move his feet. The leans, on the other hand, are timed and very responsive so that you can't just lean or duck and stay there while your blindly opponent throws hooks and uppercuts. They want you to time the move with an incoming punch so you can slip it and counter quickly.

The action tends to come in intense prolonged slugfests where he who is fastest and smartest on the buttons will win. X and Y are your quick punches for your left and right hands respectively. If you're using a righthanded fighter X is your jab and Y is your straight right hand. The A and B buttons are your left and right hooks respectively. Holding the right trigger and hitting any of the punch buttons throws an uppercut with that hand. To go to the body you just hit the button for the punch you want to throw while you're ducking.

That's not dancing, that's avoiding punishment.

In this game just like in real boxing, your jab is your life. You'll end up throwing these quick light shots more than any other punch because they set up every other weapon in your arsenal and it's the most effective deterrent to an all out rush by your opponent. Leaving that "stick" out there means you can slowly chop them down with a barrage of straight rights or go for big chunks of health by hammering him with a hook or two. The winner in Knockout Kings will be the fighter who knows how to maximize the damage when you're in close and who knows when to back off before things get to bad when he starts taking damage.

Hooks are simply devastating

Like we said you won't recognize Ray Leonard's style on his own but it would be in your best interest to utilize his speed and tough chin and incorporate it into your style when you take him into the ring. Because he's fast he's capable of landing an amazing number of punches, especially jabs, in a short amount of time. But quick jabs and straights don't hurt as much as hooks and uppercuts, so you'd want Sugar Ray to land as many haymakers as possible. That's efficient fighting. Likewise, you don't go in trying to outbox somebody using Joe Frazier. We used him quite effectively when we were able to defend and weave and pick our openings. It only takes a few shots from Smokin' Joe to flatten any opponent so you don't want to waste all of his stamina taking too many unnecessary punches to the head. He needs his energy to drop those bombs.

The left trigger is your block button. Again it's all timing so you can just cover up and stay covered up like George Foreman or somebody until you're ready to come out and fight. If you time your block with the punch they'll never touch you. Also the Xbox controller's rumble function serves as your heart meter so that if it's shaking steadily, that means you're about to go down.

His midsection has a big bullseye on it.

The energy meters are set to off as the default setting and really it changes your perspective on the game. You fight much more aggressively when you don't know how hurt you are. You can turn them on in the middle of the fight or even change the default settings but you'd be surprised how much you'll dislike the extra clutter on the screen and how tentative it will make you.

The essence of boxing may have been optimized for the videogame world in Knockout Kings but the fight system is very satisfying because it just feels like somebody is getting their snotbox busted every time you land a punch. That's all we can ask for.